Operation Valkyrie

Operation Valkyrie was an attempted military coup launched by the anti-Nazi German Resistance on 20 July 1944 during World War II. Several senior Wehrmacht generals and officers, led by Count Claus von Stauffenberg, Ludwig Beck, Henning von Tresckow, and Carl-Heinrich von Stulpnagel (among others), conspired to remove Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party from power, and they sought to make an immediate peace with the Allied Powers in exchange for the Allies recognizing the German control of certain occupied lands (most likely the pre-1939 lands). The plotters intended to detonate a bomb at Hitler's Rastenburg compound, the "Wolf's Lair", as he met with his generals to discuss the deteriorating situation with the Soviet Union. The bomb was placed in the conference room of the building, and it killed 4 people and wounded 12, although Hitler was uninjured. 7,000 people were arrested by the Gestapo in the ensuing crackdown against the resistance, and most of the resistance's leaders were executed at Plotzensee Prison, died in concentration camps, or were executed in April 1945 as the war came to an end. 4,980 resistance leaders were executed, and the war raged on until Germany's surrender on 8 May 1945.